


period drama

by onetiredboy



Series: Jay's Gender Fics (Read Disclaimer) [7]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Gen, WHAT MORE COULD YOU WANT?, juno has a 2 second cameo just so i could make a stupid joke, period talk cw, peter being a real person for a second, the vesbud isnt the focus of the fic but there is some in here!, trans man trans woman solidarity, vespa bein a doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:27:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27432739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onetiredboy/pseuds/onetiredboy
Summary: Vespa helps Nureyev stop his period; three days later she gets her own.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay, Vespa Ilkay & Peter Nureyev
Series: Jay's Gender Fics (Read Disclaimer) [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1782826
Comments: 9
Kudos: 113





	period drama

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goinghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/goinghost/gifts).



> **EDIT: I am discontinuing this series. Please follow the link to the series this is from and read the disclaimer there. Thank you!**
> 
> me to danny: omg im so behind in nano i have to write 10k today to catch up :/  
> him: i was reading ur gender fics today and--  
> me: would you like another one? do you want me to do another one? anything for you my liege i am finishing this wip right now ill find time for 10k sometime else
> 
> detailed gender notes/cws: this fic involves needles & blood tests, discussion of periods (nureyev & vespa) & period symptoms (vespa). her symptoms don't include blood though (while i imagine in the space future there could be some form of uterus transplant surgery, she doesn't have it) there's also some canon-typical self critical thinking from vespa.
> 
> thanks to my friend dav for throwing period puns at me til i came up with a name. sorry to everyone for having to read the name. dav catch up on penumbra so you can read this pls thx bye

"Alright," Vespa flicks on the lights to the medbay and walks right over to the bench, pulling out the file she has on 'Peter Ransom's' medical conditions. She slaps it down and turns around to face him, "What is so important you woke me up to do for you?"

"I think perhaps I might need my testosterone refilled," Ransom sits on the end of the gurney. There are dark circles under his eyes and his hair is somewhat mussed. He's been more obviously disheveled recently, and Vespa doesn't know if it's because his time is nearly up — whatever that means — or if his walls are coming down. Whatever that means.

"How do you take it?" she asks him, and fiddles through a drawer for gloves, a needle, and a tourniquet. "I'll check your levels," she adds, when she sees him looking warily at her handful of equipment.

"Subdermal pellet, usually," Ransom says. "They last around six months, but I always forget until... my physical symptoms become a bit more obvious."

"Physical symptoms?" Vespa asks as she attaches the tourniquet to his right arm. She might consider being a little less invasive if he had ever once given her a reason not to be. If the only way she’s going to get information of any kind out of him is through her professional medical responsibilities, then that’s the hole he dug for himself.

“My...” he hesitates, “Menstrual cycle.”

Vespa snorts and takes his arm, glancing over his skin for veins she can draw blood from. “No point being coy, Ransom, it’s not like it’s news to me.”

It’s not — a month ago in the dead of night she found Steel upending the drawers in the medbay looking for something, and it wasn’t until she had a scalpel near somewhere _exquisitely_ intimate and a promise low in her throat about making one set of balls match the other that he squeaked out a story about having to find menstrual products for ‘... someone, okay?’ and Vespa had pieced the rest together. She knows Ransom knows that happened, so why be modest now?

He says nothing while she flips the settings of the needle to test for testosterone, and then sticks it into his vein. He stares impassively at the tube as it fills slowly with red blood, and then she takes it out, placing a cotton ball over the wound.

She shakes the tube. It makes a beep, and a panel with digital numbers pops up.

"You are getting low," she says. "I don't have any pellets but I can give you a shot for now while I find a way to get you one."

"Thank you," he says.

"You're lucky," Vespa says as she turns away to go rooting through the cupboards for where she keeps the hormones, "Far as I've seen you only get a little teary on your period. I get the full deal, cramps and everything. Well. Everything except the actual bleeding."

She finds the t-shot in her drawers and pulls it out. Ransom's suspiciously quiet, she thinks, all sitting there like a kicked puppy. Usually he's got at least something to say. Maybe it's his perio—

Vespa's brain catches up to her words and she stops, suddenly embarrassed. Nice one, Ilkay, point out the exact thing he came to get treatment to stop. Dismiss his discomfort, why don't you? Maybe he'll get you back one time with a _oh Vespa, you're so lucky to hear voices in your head._

Damn it. She may not like Peter Ransom but that doesn't mean she wants to be an asshole to him, either. Not about this. Now what?

Vespa walks over to Ransom's side and takes his arm. She pauses for a moment, trying to think of something to say.

"Everything alright?" he asks, "Not about to inject me with poison and call it an accident, are you?"

"Shut up, Ransom," she says, and gives him the shot without giving him any time to prepare.

"Ow!"

"That's what you get," she mutters, and puts the needle in a collection tray.

For a moment, she stills by the gurney. She clenches and unclenches her jaw, and then says all in one breath, "Look: I'm sorry."

Ransom stares at her with wide eyes, "I beg your pardon?"

"I said I'm sorry, alright?"

"Vespa! I'm shocked. Here I was beginning to think you were incapable of remorse. My puncture wound forgives you."

"Not for the stupid shot," she growls. "God, you're annoying. I'm—" This is embarrassing. Ransom doesn't even deserve an apology, the slimy bastard. But still. It's her bad, and... and whatever, okay? "I'm sorry for... bringing up your period. Didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"Oh," Ransom says.

For a moment there's just silence. Vespa deals with the needle and her gloves, and washes her hands in the sink.

"You can leave whenever you want," she says.

"Right," Ransom says. He stands up off the end of the gurney and hesitates. "Thank you, Vespa. I appreciate it."

"Get out of here, Ransom," Vespa says.

"Right," he says again. Hesitates again. "Goodnight, Vespa," he says at last, and slips out of the room in silence.

"Yeah, yeah," Vespa says to herself in the empty medbay, and then sets to disinfecting her workbench.

* * *

The next day she wakes up and notices a tenderness in her breasts that makes her groan and stuff her face back into the pillow.

Three days later, she wakes up one morning curling into herself and groaning in pain.

"Stupid Ransom," she mutters into the sheets.

"Ransom? What's he got to do with your stomach pain?" Buddy asks from across the room, where she's getting dressed to go get painkillers. "Oh dear. You didn't eat anything he cooked, did you?"

"Hell no. I was talking to him about his period and it must have set mine off."

Buddy laughs softly, "That's not quite how it works, love." She leans down and presses a kiss to Vespa's sweaty forehead. "Though I'll agree it doesn't feel like it's been a whole month already. I'll be back."

Buddy returns with painkillers and leaves again to hold family breakfast. The one good thing about her cramps is that Vespa doesn't have to deal with that. For one thing, Buddy always insists on waiting until everyone is present before they can start eating, and Steel and Ransom are _always_ twenty minutes late and still half clinging to each other by the time they get there. At least Vespa is only clingy to Buddy in private. Mostly because she'd rather die than Steel find out she's just as hopelessly gone on Buddy as he is on Ransom.

Then the pain gets worse again, and actually all she wants is to have Buddy beside her, holding her through it and telling her it's all gonna be okay. She's been dealing with monthly cycles of cramps and sickness since about a year or two into starting oestrogen, but they'd eased off during the time she'd spent years underweight and radiation sick. Now that she's starting to get healthier again, she has to readjust to the periods coming back with a vengeance.

She's just about at her limit of waiting when Buddy finally comes back. The painkillers have taken the edge off, but she still feels achy and miserable.

"Surviving, love?" Buddy sits down on the edge of the bed and brushes her fingers over Vespa's forehead, before leaning down and pressing her lips just between her eyebrows.

"Better now that you're here," Vespa says quietly, and means it so earnestly it hurts.

Buddy smiles. "I may not be able to stay with you all day, love. Juno's actually done some investigating for once — would you believe it — and found something rather interesting that needs to have its place found in our database of knowledge before our next heist." She sighs, and Vespa reaches out to take her hand.

"Don't overwork yourself, Bud," she says, and watches the weariness Buddy had started to show evaporate from her face.

"Of course not, darling! I'm perfectly paced and completely composed, as usual."

"Sure," Vespa says, and sees Buddy glance away from her and set her shoulders back before she stands.

"Now, I'll try to make this as quick as possible. I'll be back before you'll notice, love. The rest of the crew are all briefed about what's going on, so I doubt you'll be bothered by any of them."

"Right," Vespa says, and then, with another quick kiss to the forehead, Buddy breezes out of the room again.

Vespa settles into the dip in the mattress, and feels her mind settle into the rut of thinking its found itself stuck in increasingly often over the last few months. What use is she to this crew, really? If she's not out of it in one way, she's out of it another. Incapacitated. A hinderance. She should be out there helping Buddy right now. If Steel or Ransom tries something, and something happens, it'll be all Vespa's fault for not keeping a close enough eye on either one of them, all because she's out of the game, out of control, out of her—

There's a knock at the door. It's not Buddy's knock — it's too shy, and she would've just barged in anyway.

"What?" she barks.

"Vespa?" Oh great, it's Ransom. "May I come in?"

"What do you want?"

"I heard you weren't feeling well—"

"And you thought you'd decide to make it worse?"

There's silence on the other side of the door, and then Ransom says, a slightly harder edge to his tone, "I brought you something. May I come in?"

"Fine," Vespa sighs, and rolls onto her back.

The door opens, and she only knows Ransom enters the room because she can see movement in her peripheral vision. Walks as silently as a Rangian bandicoot, that guy. She turns on the bed to glare at him.

He's holding a mug of something beige and frothy. He sits down on the edge of the bed and holds it out to her. She gets up on her elbows in the bed and sneers down at it, "What the _hell_ is that, Ransom?"

"Someone used to make this for me, when I was suffering from... similar ailments," Ransom says, and pushes the mug forwards more insistently until she takes it. "I'm not sure if it really does anything, medically," he admits. "But it's comforting."

Vespa peers into it. She breathes hard enough on it that the bubbles part, and she catches the glimpse of a leaf falling to the bottom of the mug through the milky liquid. She looks up at him, "You can't expect me to drink this."

"Why not?"

"I dunno! This could be literally anything, Ransom. Rat poison."

Without another word, Ransom takes the mug back out of her hands and raises it to his mouth, taking a deep gulp. He leans back and wipes the pale bubble mustache off his top lip, "There."

"Now it's got your spit in it."

Ransom rolls his eyes and hands the mug back out to her, "Please try it. You often say I haven't done enough things in good faith for you to trust me. Well, consider this in good faith. Besides, I wanted to express my appreciation for your being considerate in the medbay the other night."

That makes Vespa hesitate. She reaches out and takes the drink, "Dunno what there is to be appreciative for," she mumbles. "I'm a doctor. _And_ I've had people be insensitive in the exact same stupid ways. Bringing up shit about my body I clearly don't want them to point out. Should know better."

"It's alright, Vespa. Sincerely it is," Ransom says, and smiles thinly at her. "Besides, you have a point, I always have been rather lucky with my periods. They weren't always so painless, though, especially not growing up. The people I grew up around were _terrible_ at dealing with it..."

Something flickers across his eyes suddenly that looks so distinctly hurt that it takes Vespa aback. Then as quick as it's there, it's gone, and he's looking at her cheerily agian. "The teariness is terribly embarrassing. I hate it, _"_ he shakes his head. "Do you know once I cried over a commercial for a set of spoons?"

"A—"

"They fit so perfectly together, Vespa, and I thought _why can't I be a spoon_ , and then before you know it..." he holds out both his hands, "I sobbed my way through half a tissue box."

Vespa looks at him. Then a laugh bubbles out from deep in her chest, and escapes through her teeth before she can bite it down. "That's bullshit. You're making that up just to make me feel better."

Ransom shrugs his shoulders, a softer smile than the forced one before dancing around his lips, "Believe that if you will. It'll certainly protect my dignity if you do."

"Why are you telling me any of this, anyway? Usually you shrivel up and hide in the vents if you so much as let slip your favourite colour."

She sees Ransom physically shift the second she says it. The smile disappears and his shoulders draw back. It's almost like he draws a curtain between them all at once. "Ah..." he says quietly.

The silence is suddenly very awkward. There's a puzzled sort of look on Ransom's face, and then he clears his throat and the look disappears.

"Well! I suppose you're just that nice as company, Vespa," he says, in a voice completely different to before. His accent has gotten softer, and it seems his voice may have dropped a little — more of the obnoxious Ransom voice that Vespa's used to.

She narrows her eyes at him and he stands up off the edge of the bed.

"Now that you've brought it to my attention, I suppose I should get out of your hair. My, you know how to distract a man!" he says, and laughs his annoying, entitled little chuckle.

"Yeah..." Vespa says.

"I'll see you when you're feeling better. I hope you enjoy the drink, and let me know if I can do anything more for you," he's talking as he basically runs for the door.

"Thief," Vespa says just before he slips out of the room, and he pauses. She can tell he doesn't want to turn around, but after a moment, he does.

"I like you better when you're not faking."

He looks back at her, and his dark eyes are worried behind the frames of his glasses. "I'm afraid I'm not sure what you're referring to," he says, and then he leaves without another second.

Vespa sits in the silence of her room, staring at the closed door. Without thinking, she lifts the mug to her lips, and takes a sip.

Then she spits it right back into the mug. "What the _hell_ is in this thing?!"


End file.
